5 Things You Need to Know Before You Run an Influencer Marketing Campaign

So you’ve heard the buzz about influencer marketing and have decided to run your first campaign with content creators? Great! But there’s only one problem… what do you do now?

Influencer marketing is one of the most effective ways to engage your audience and reach your goals. But if you’ve never run a campaign before, it can be hard to know where to start.

How do you find the right creators? What platforms should you focus on? How do you contact the influencers in the first place? How much should you pay them?

Never fear, Brandnew is here with a quick and dirty guide to help you get on the way to running your first campaign. What follows is an overview of what you need to know before you run an influencer marketing campaign.

 

1) What are you trying to achieve?

Before starting, it’s important to ask yourself what exactly you are trying to achieve. Why are you running a campaign in the first place?

Are you looking to get more exposure for a product launch? Build brand awareness through a strategic ambassadorship? Or maybe you want to get your target market more engaged with your brand in general.

Before diving in, take some time to this about what your objectives are. Your creator campaign should play a role within your broader marketing plan, which should fit within your overall business objectives. Align your objectives for greater chances of success.

 

2) Who specifically are you trying to reach?

Before you go about choosing creators, you need to know who you are trying to reach. Are they 15 – 18 year old girls with a passion for makeup? New mothers in their early 30s looking to get back in shape after childbirth? Teenage boys with a love for all things video games?

Get specific. Knowing who your audience is will make it easier to choose the right creators.
As certain demographics are more likely to be found on certain platforms, knowing specifically who you are targeting will determine where you focus your efforts.

Take the time to clarify who your ideal target is. Consider more than their basic demographics. Outside of your product, what are they interested in? What do they do for fun? What influences their behaviour? Thinking in this way may help you find a more unconventional approach for choosing the right creators.

 

3) How to find the right creators

With your goals and target market clarified, now it’s time to find the creators that will help you get there. When choosing a creator, remember again that relevance is key. In an effort to get the biggest return for their money, historically brands have put the emphasis on reach. After all, 5 million followers is better than 100,000 right?

Not exactly.

What you are looking for is relevance. Kendall Jenner may have 63.7m Instagram followers, but you can be pretty certain that they won’t be all that interested in carbon disc brakes for downhill mountain bikes.

Promoting such a product would be a waste of time and money (lots of money).

The better the relevance the greater chance of success. Relevance makes for a more authentic campaign. Authenticity and relevance leads to greater audience engagement, which is the ultimate goal.

You can manually search for creators but platforms like Brandnew’s make the process of finding and connecting with creators a lot easier.  

Obviously you are looking for audiences who would be interested in your product, but sometimes this can be a bit broader than you may think. A coffee brand may have more luck partnering with a lifestyle creator than a coffee specialist. As mentioned above, sometimes the best fit could be from a broader perspective than you’d initially think. It will take some experimentation to get the mix right.

 

4) How much should you pay the creator?

A.k.a “How long is a piece of string?”. There is unfortunately no set fee in the industry and what you pay them is dependent on their reach, engagement and experience. To help simplify matters, it’s best to work to an overall campaign budget and work backwards from that.

Once you’ve determined your campaign goals, you can set some metrics which will help you estimate your costs. Keep in mind though, that influencer marketing often isn’t direct sales conversion, which may make setting financial based metrics a challenge.

The rule of thumb with payments is that creators with a larger reach and engagement rate will charge more. Instead of throwing your whole budget at one creator, you may want to consider experimenting with a handful of different creators at a lower overall budget when you start out. Fortunately, the development of content creator platforms has made it easier to run campaigns with multiple influencers at the same time.

 

5) How should I work with the creator?

This is an important one. Remember that creators are not media channels. They are people.

They have built their following based on their creativity and unique voice. They may be photographers, artists, writers or just entertaining personalities. Above all they are content creators. When working with creators, you are looking to find a way to express your message through their unique voice. Not bend their voice to sound like you.

With that in mind, you should work collaboratively with creators. Respect their creativity, input and expertise. Ultimately if the fit is right, you should find a mutually agreeable way to bring your campaign to life. Don’t overly limit their creative control. Provide them with a solid brief of what you want to communicate and let them bring it to life.

By all means provide approval checkpoints, but don’t strangle the process.

The more brands respect creators as people and vice versa, the better the overall results.

You should now have a rough idea of what you need to know before you start your next campaign. Have fun and good luck!